Can Your Drone Fly Like a Cat?

There is a centuries-old idiom in English culture adapted from a Scottish proverb: “When pigs fly.” It’s meant to express doubt about an individual’s ability or willingness to complete a task. For example, “I’ll have all my chores done in an hour,” a child declares to his parent. The parent replies, somewhat sarcastically, “I’ll believe that when pigs fly.”

Now, instead of pigs, a team of South Korean scientists has swapped swine for cats as inspiration to improve drones’ ability to better distinguish targets in daylight and in low light visibility settings be they nighttime, fog, or camouflaged objects.

The researchers took their inspiration from cats’ eyes with their slit-like vertical, elliptical aperture and tapetum lucidum (a reflective layer of tissue at the back of the eye) to devise a piece of hardware which can be fitted onto a drone’s camera to filter out redundant information, reduce excessive light, and enhance photosensitivity.

The structural and functional features of  a feline’s eyes.

The result improves many of the critical functions drones perform now as well as those they will perform in the future, such as in military applications, search and rescue, logistics, and drone deliveries. The artificially enhanced vision systems will be able to more effectively detect, track, and distinguish target objects in dynamically changing environments. Those advances might save lives, improve the drones’ performance, and reduce costs.

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